The Devil's Hand

by Carr, Jack

  He had purchased the property with a sliver of his inheritance after his return from Mogadishu. It had come a long way. The years following 9/11 saw an explosion of growth in the security sector, and Sawyer was positioned to pounce. He used the new influx of capital from overseas contracts to expand the North Carolina complex, also adding off-site facilities in California, Illinois, and Florida. Maritime, air, and intelligence divisions were run from offices in McLean, Virginia, near his most profitable clients, the U.S. Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency. The privatization and outsourcing spurred on by the Global War on Terror had been good to Sawyer. The spartan offices on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp stood in stark contrast to the building in McLean where politicians could stop by for bourbon, and military and intelligence officials could marvel at the impeccably decorated conference rooms and offices. Maybe there was an office waiting for them in retirement if they approved a multimillion-dollar security contract?

  When Sawyer was in North Carolina he wanted to train. He’d hit the obstacle course with a group from Quantico early that morning, impressing even the most fit agents in the group. When HRT moved on to the Tactical Training Laboratory to practice bus takedowns, Erik had challenged his COO of the training division to a shoot-off. The COO was a crusty master chief who kept the range schedule packed with well-paying clientele. He also happened to be on the streets of Mogadishu on October 3 and 4 of 1993. They ran a stress course competition in full kit. Erik won the speed game but lost by ten points when they scored their targets.

  “Fast is fine,” the master chief chided his boss, “but accuracy is everything.”

  “Wyatt Earp, I believe,” Erik said, citing the attributed source of the quote.

  Though he didn’t mention it to the old SEAL sniper, Erik knew his first shots were on target well before those of the aging master chief. He counted it as a win.

  Originally incorporated as Talos, named for the bronze god who guarded the island of Crete, the company name had subsequently been changed to Masada following the unfortunate 2005 Gardez incident. In Greek mythology, Talos had a weakness: an unprotected vein in his ankle held his ichor, the lifeblood of the gods. It was a reminder to Sawyer that even the most powerful and well trained among them had flaws. The country had weaknesses, as did his company and each individual operator who now worked for him. The key was acknowledging those weaknesses and then taking steps to turn them into strengths.

  Rebranding his company after an incident on par with the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, he had chosen the name Masada for the great fortress in southern Israel overlooking the Dead Sea, a fortress occupied by warriors who defied the Romans. It was occupied in A.D. 66 by a Jewish sect known as the Sicarii, for the small sicae daggers they carried concealed in their clothing. At the end of the First Jewish-Roman War, as the Romans prepared to overrun the citadel, the Sicarii set Masada ablaze and committed mass suicide rather than become slaves of the Roman Empire. Sawyer’s twenty-first-century Masada in North Carolina was his personal fortress and his operators were his Sicarii.

  Sawyer registered Masada offshore in Barbados as a tax-exempt corporate entity. With daily flights to Bridgetown from Miami, Charlotte, Dallas, Philadelphia, New York, and Atlanta, it was easy to host meetings away from the prying eyes of investigative journalists employed by the New York Times and Washington Post. Though Sawyer wouldn’t be caught dead on a commercial carrier, his clients could fly into Grantley Adams International Airport and then transfer to a Twin Otter for the short flight to the island of Mustique, a Caribbean hideaway for those willing and able to pay for its veil of privacy. Sawyer’s father had purchased property there in the late sixties, property that was now endowed by a trust attached to an innocuous LLC.

  Sawyer had printed out the report from the surveillance team assigned to James Reece the night before, mulling it over in preparation for his upcoming call to Senator Thwaite. Rather than reading important documents on his monitor, he preferred to print them off. He needed the visceral experience of reading from physical paper in his hands. It helped him process and think. He circled sections and made notations with his S. T. Dupont fountain pen, handcrafted to honor the warriors of feudal Japan. It had been a gift from a Japanese businessman after Sawyer had provided him with revealing photographs of the CEO of a rival company. The pen always reminded the founder of Masada that the Sicarii predated the assassins of ancient Japan by centuries.

  Sawyer had gone straight to the gym from the range, his ten-point loss to the master chief driving him to a new personal record on the classic 21-15-9 thruster and pull-up Fran CrossFit WOD. He showered and dressed in jeans with a black polo embroidered with the Masada company logo: crossed curved sicae daggers. His custom Zev Technologies Glock 19 and two extra magazines were at the ready on a thick nylon belt.

  Sawyer picked up the phone and dialed the senator’s office number, patiently waiting for fifteen minutes on hold for Thwaite to finish a “meeting” that Sawyer knew didn’t exist. It was the senator’s way of trying to exert his power over the former Army Ranger. Sawyer was determined not to mention the delay as he knew no reaction irritated the senator to no end.

  “Erik, sorry to keep you waiting. I was in with members of the Intelligence Committee.”

  “Call me back in five,” was Sawyer’s response before hanging up.

  Sawyer’s KryptAll buzzed three minutes later.

  “Okay, we are secure,” Thwaite said. “What do you have for me?”

  “Have you read the report?”

  “Yes, it is interesting in all but the recommendations. Those were perceptibly missing.”

  “I am more than happy to charge you for recommendations. The contract was just surveillance, not analysis and recommended COAs.”

  “COAs?”

  “Courses of action, Senator.”

  “You’ve given me next to nothing, Erik. I need text messages, pictures, something to build a story to leak to the media.”

  “What we have, Senator, is James Reece meeting privately with the president of the United States. That intel is from your source, so our report is basing its findings on that assumption.”

  “He did. I have it on good authority.”

  “Of course you do, Senator. Soon thereafter Reece drives to Chicago, where he stakes out a house belonging to a Kareem Talib, who then dies of a heart attack. Reece then drives to Atlanta and stays at the extended-stay hotel in Buckhead for six days, driving to and from the Masjid of Al-Islam Mosque in East Atlanta every morning. He checks out, but our tracking device puts his vehicle a block from the hotel when Sohrab Behzad, a mosque security consultant with the Islamic Relief Society of America, is killed. Cause of death: stab wounds and seven bullets from a firearm chambered in 9mm Parabellum. The surveillance team trails Reece out of Atlanta and observes him dropping off a woman at a gas station outside Braselton. The follow-on surveillance team confirmed she was a stripper and prostitute. Masada has Reece’s phone and text records. There were no communications with any numbers other than investigative journalist Katie Buranek and a number in Montana belonging to a hunting operation; nothing to indicate what he was doing in Chicago or Atlanta. He is now back in the D.C.-Virginia-Maryland area.”

  “Like I said, Erik, this just makes me wonder what I’m paying you for.”

  “Time and place connect him to the deaths of Talib and Behzad, both Muslim males.”

  “Circumstantial evidence doesn’t cut it, Sawyer. I need something I can use.”

  “What did you find out about Talib and Behzad? I would think the chairman of the Intelligence Committee would have the power to look into their backgrounds.”

  Thwaite ignored the comment.

  “Talib was under surveillance for years after 9/11.”

  Sawyer leaned forward in his chair.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Thwaite said, finally enjoying a small victory.

  “Why?”

  “Something about taki
ng, or I should say, attempting to take flying lessons at the same school as the hijackers.”

  “At the same time?” Sawyer asked.

  “No, about a year before.”

  “Why was surveillance dropped?”

  “Clean record. No contact with anyone on a terrorist watch list or no-fly list in person or electronically. No extremist website activity.”

  “When was it dropped?”

  “After the bin Laden raid.”

  “And Behzad?” Sawyer asked.

  “Juvenile record for drugs in Vegas. Looks like he committed to Islam in prison and has been clean ever since. He was one of the country’s foremost authorities on mosque security.”

  “Country of origin?”

  “Parents are from Morocco. Immigrated to the United States in 1992 and settled in Las Vegas. Father is a court recorder and the mother is employed by one of the casinos.”

  “Any government surveillance similar to Talib?”

  “If there was, it’s not in any government records.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m going to need more, Sawyer.”

  “Recommend we stay on Commander Reece. It appears he was surveilling both at the time of their deaths. There is a connection. We will find it.”

  Sawyer could buy one coincidence. Two, on the other hand?

  Fool me once, he thought.

  “Find the connection. Build the story. Get me what I need to destroy this president.”

  “Senator, these secure phones we use…”

  “What about them?”

  “Talos.”

  “What?”

  “There is always a weakness,” Sawyer said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll be in touch. Clear your calendar in the evenings all next week. I’m coming back to D.C.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Richardson, Texas

  DR. JAY DROPPED HIS day pack onto the cracked leather passenger seat of his slate-gray 1970 Porsche 911S and turned the key to crank the engine. It sounded more like a lawn mower than a high-performance sports car, but it was now more than fifty years old and built in a time when it was still possible to turn wrenches on motors instead of plugging them into computers for expensive diagnostic checks at the dealership. Today, its specs were dwarfed by even the most average of economy cars, but back in 1970 it was the pinnacle of performance.

  Gripping the wheel always brought him right back to the dinner table of his family’s small Centralia, Pennsylvania, home, where he would spend hours talking with his father about race cars. The family had neither a vehicle nor a television, but that did not stop them from dreaming. One of Dr. Jay’s most pleasant memories was of taking the bus into Pottsville to watch Le Mans. For the first three minutes and forty seconds of the film as Steve McQueen throttles his Porsche through France, the legendary actor is uncharacteristically upstaged by the 200-horsepower machine.

  Dr. Jay had no idea how many previous owners his 911S had known before ending up on a used car lot outside Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where he had seen it rotting away, dented and unloved. The financing interest rates had been atrocious, as they are at all car dealerships in military towns where slick salesmen in cheap suits love to take advantage of young E-3s who have steady paychecks for the first time in their lives. Dr. Jay was already a major when he pulled a U-turn and drove onto the used car lot. He knew better, but purchased the German classic automobile anyway and kept a promise he’d made in that movie theater with his father when his age was not yet in double digits.

  His given name was Julius Mieczkowski, but because his last name was difficult to pronounce and because there was already another recruit of Polish descent assigned to the same barracks who had been given the name “Ski,” he became “J” for Julius, a nickname that stuck. Upon graduation from Air Force boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base, “J” had become Airman First Class “Jay” and then Senior Airman “Jay” before receiving his commission to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

  The path into service had started in what was now a forgotten relic of an America that no longer existed. The Mieczkowskis had held on in the dying Pennsylvania mining community for three generations until 1984, when Congress offered buyout options to relocate the desperate residents of what was becoming a ghost town. A mysterious fire had been burning underground for decades, slowly killing an area and economy rooted in coal. His parents accepted a modest payment from the federal government, purchased a used station wagon, and headed to Texas for opportunities in the oil business. They arrived just as oil fell below twenty dollars a barrel, sending thousands of previously thriving companies out of business.

  Julius’s mother found work as a checkout clerk with a local grocery store and his father took odd jobs as a handyman. All five kids were working by middle school in a time and place where labor laws were not strictly enforced.

  Julius still remembered the taste of the fried Spam he was eating when he heard that devastating cough. He would never forget the look on his mother’s face when she heard her husband try to mask it by pretending to clear his throat. Mining families could immediately differentiate the cough of a common cold from the one that meant death. Pneumoconiosis plagued the mining community. More commonly referred to as “black lung,” once you had it there was no known medical treatment. His father died on Christmas Day, when Julius was in his first year of high school.

  It was that cough that spurred Julius to take his MCATs and pursue a career in medicine, first becoming Major Jay and then Dr. Jay. Trained in internal medicine and general surgery, he transferred into the Air Force Reserves in the late nineties. He wanted to provide a solid financial foundation for his wife and children, a foundation young Julius had never known.

  As a lieutenant colonel Air Force Reserve doctor, he was mobilized after September 11, 2001, and soon found himself in Afghanistan running a field hospital. An assignment establishing the hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad would follow. When he had his three years under his belt as a colonel, he retired and accepted a position at the Richardson Methodist Medical Center just northeast of Dallas. He didn’t want his kids to grow up without a father.

  His experience in Afghanistan and Iraq lent itself to emergency medicine, and working in the small regional emergency room with a level-one response team provided all the stimulation he needed. At this stage in his career he worked 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. shifts for four days straight but was then able to enjoy ten days off with his family. The boys were getting older and would soon be in college, pursuing dreams of their own. He and his wife had a few more years with their youngest daughter and he intended to make the most of them.

  He was conservative in his investments and the family lived well below their means. The Porsche was the one indulgence he allowed himself, a promise to a seven-year-old boy in a Pottsville, Pennsylvania, movie theater eating popcorn with his father. Now in his mid-fifties with two sons in high school and a daughter in eighth grade, a reserve military retirement check that would kick in a few years down the line, and a secure job at the hospital, he finally felt like he’d built the life he wanted.

  No matter how much he loved the familiar sound of the German engine and the slight aroma of gasoline in the cabin, he couldn’t keep his mind off work. It was a bit unusual for an early flu spike, yet the hospital had seen more than the usual number this year. The entire country remained on edge from the COVID-19 pandemic still so fresh in the collective consciousness, and with flu symptoms so closely mimicking the fever, chills, headaches, and body aches of the coronavirus, Richardson Methodist Medical Center had invested in an Abbott ID NOW point-of-care testing system. The procedure and testing provided coronavirus results in less than fifteen minutes. So far, all patients exhibiting flu-like symptoms had tested negative for COVID. This had to be just an early flu season.

  It was 9:35 p.m. when he pulled the Porsche that his kids affectionately called the “time machine” into the garage. He
kicked off his shoes and took the four steps up into the main house. He called out a quick hello to his wife and whichever kids happened to be home before taking the stairs two at a time to the second-level master bedroom to jump in the shower.

  His family was accustomed to this routine. “Too many bugs in the emergency room,” he always told his teenage girl.

  By the time he was out of the shower, his wife was just saying good night to their youngest. He stuck his head into her room and whispered, “I love you, honey. Sweet dreams.” He then said hello to the boys, who had been back from Friday night’s football game for a couple of hours and were having a second dinner as teenage football players were apt to do.

  “How did you play?” he asked his oldest.

  “Caught a touchdown pass, but we still got creamed.”

  “Well, that happens in life, son. How about you?” he asked his middle child.

  “I’m off the bench. Finally starting. Just JV,” he said.

  “Fantastic! I’ll be there next Friday. Good night, boys. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “We won’t. Good night, Dad.”

  He entered the living room and gave his wife a kiss before sitting down to join her for a glass of wine.

  “What happened to keeping the dog off the couch?” he asked, reaching over to pet the old golden retriever behind the ears.

  “The same thing that happened to the ‘not feeding her from the table rule,’ ” she replied. “You all clean? There are leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

  “All clean,” he confirmed, looking back into the kitchen. “And as far as leftovers, I think the monsters have devoured them.”

  “They tend to do that, don’t they?” she said. “I can make you something.”

  They had been married for twenty-five years, surviving multiple wars and a residency she categorized as tougher than the deployments.

  “I’ll see what I can scavenge after the boys vacate the premises. How was the day?”